Russia to Create National Payment Network

Following pilot programs in 5 U.S. cities, LevelUp and Heartland Payment Systems are partnering on a nationwide rollout of a mobile payment solution. This partnership will enable LevelUp to use Heartland’s sales force of over 800 people and customer base of more than 250,000 merchants to more rapidly deploy its mobile payments and loyalty solution across the country.

LevelUp will also have access to Heartland’s authorization and settlement network, which is capable of supporting 3,000 transactions per second and providing a response time of less than one second on each individual transaction.

“The biggest challenge facing mobile payment companies right now is scale,” said Chris Mahl, LevelUp’s chief revenue and strategy officer. “LevelUp has been able to reach 1 million users and 5,000 merchants relatively quickly, but we need even wider consumer and merchant adoption before LevelUp hits the mainstream. Our partnership with Heartland Payment Systems will allow us to fire up our growth rate as we begin a phased roll-out with Heartland’s impactful sales force selling LevelUp and our white-label solutions to businesses and consumers across the country.”

For merchants with more than 10 locations, LevelUp and Heartland will absorb 25 percent of the cost to develop a white-labeled iPhone and Android app if that merchant either switches to Heartland or extends an existing relationship with the payments processor.

As NFC-based universal mobile payment solutions like Google Wallet and Isis struggle to gain traction, solutions like LevelUp’s have a prime opportunity to grow their presence the market. By partnering with Heartland, LevelUp is taking full advantage of this opportunity, establishing a connection with more than a quarter million merchants. The longer it takes the NFC wallet providers to establish a strong base of customers and merchants, the harder it will be to fight through relationships such as this one.